11 Bad-Good Horror Movies You Need To See
No genre exemplifies Bad-Good like the horror genre. Sure, there are a few action movies that are unintentionally funny, but for the most part all other movies are just outright good or outright bad. Horror films often pride themselves on the fact that they're awful, and that, honestly, is why I love them. Sometimes being awful can be an art.
Here are eleven of the worst-best horrible wonderful retarded awesome movies ever made, what makes them bad, what makes them good and why you ought to watch them.
AKA: Brain Dead
WHY IT'S BAD
This is one Peter Jackson's early films, back before he began winning Oscars for
The Lord of the Rings and being the size of an elephant. Believe it or not, Jackson used to make schlocky zombie films (as well as unwatchable puppet movies like
Meet the Feebles) instead of epics about little hairy-footed people and CGI-fests about giant apes. Actually, come to think of it, maybe it's not all that hard to believe. Still, this movie is about a thousandth of the budget of Jackson's later films, and it shows.
WHY IT'S GOOD
This zombie movie is schlocky in the best sense of the word. There's so much blood and gore that it's beyond ridiculous, to the point of being laugh-out-loud funny. At no point does
Dead Alive take itself too seriously, particularly when the best character of all time, Father McGruder, is introduced and says the following:
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Just to behold the greatness and awfulness of Peter Jackson before studios started puking money at him.
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Bad Taste, Jackson's very first movie, a gross-out extravaganza about aliens. Featuring a young, thin Jackson himself as a guy who loses the back of his skull.
WHY IT'S BAD
Let me count the ways. Not only is it the third sequel to a film that didn't need any sequels to begin with, it also happens to feature exactly
zero chainsaw deaths. Keep in mind that the film is titled
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. No chainsaw deaths. Add to that the fact that the only ostensible plot twist is all but given away on the DVD cover (Spoiler Alert! Matthew McConaughey is
crazy!) and that for some inexplicable reason Leatherface has decided to become a transvestite, and you've got one hell of a stinker.
WHY IT'S GOOD
It stars Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey as Scared High School Girl and Crazy Tow Truck Man, respectively. Not only that, but these two very young, desperate soon-to-be-stars are just trying their damndest to put something of value into this movie. The result? Some glorious overacting by everyone in the cast, especially one scene where Crazy Tow Truck Man gaudily howls after Scared High School Girl as if he were confused for a moment and thought he was in a werewolf movie.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
To see two now A-listers slumming it in their early careers in what must still serve as a face-reddening embarrassment every time it comes up in conversation.
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Leprechaun, which most assuredly still makes Jennifer Aniston have night terrors.
WHY IT'S BAD
Because, as a parody, it fails completely. Made at the tail end of Leslie Nielsen's period of actually making decently funny movies,
Repossessed was the beginning of his descent into being involved with embarrassing garbage like
2001: A Space Travesty, with its idea of humor being a priest training for an exorcism by boxing a fast bag and exorcising the devil with rock and roll. That's not funny, it's just...kinda dumb. And including Linda Blair as the possessed housewife (essentially reprising her character from The Exorcist) is not cute or clever -- it's simply a reminder that this movie is a failed parody of a movie that was actually good.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Because, despite the fact that it completely falls flat in terms of being intentionally funny, it still succeeds in being unintentionally funny. Leslie Nielsen's mugging performance is so awful that it's actually kind of endearing, and the possession special effects are actually laughably worse than they were 17 years earlier. Linda Blair's attempts a humor are sort of cringingly entertaining as well, and the inclusion of a character who's a stereotype of a stereotype (Ned Beatty's televangelist) is some kind of weird meta-funny.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because this movie taught me what an aglet is -- they're the plastic things on the ends of shoelaces. (Linda Blair's character is named Nancy Aglet.)
WHY IT'S BAD
Because it basically all takes place in a warehouse basement, for one thing. Also, there's a scene where some punks go to a graveyard and dance that makes me embarrassed not only for the punks, but for any dead people that they may be dancing on. The punks, also, are the most stereotypical teenagers you can imagine, in the worst possible way. Also, the explanation for the zombies' existence (chemical spill causes rain that raises the dead) defies the zombie movie convention of just having no explanation (there's a reason for that -- the explanations, like this one, are usually incredibly stupid).
WHY IT'S GOOD
It has the coolest zombies ever. Forget
28 Days Later, this was the original fast-zombie movie. Not only that, they talk. In fact, to my knowledge, this is the only zombie movie that actually features the zombies saying "Braaaaaains!" which may make it worth seeing in itself. Also, there's a scene in which, after the zombies have killed and eaten a group of paramedics, a zombie grabs the CB radio in the ambulance and insists that the dispatcher "Send...more...
paramedics!"
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Braaaaaaaaains!
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Return of the Living Dead 3, the greatest zombie love story ever told.
WHY IT'S BAD
It's an example of using one of the two most cliched ways to spice up a franchise: set it underwater or in space. In addition,
Jason X uses the hackneyed "create a super monster" formula of making an old baddie seem threatening again. The dialogue is painful to listen to, and the premise of some kind of space college just doesn't make any ****ing sense. Especially considering that the class seems to think taking Jason -- who they know as a ruthless killer hundreds of years into the future -- onto their ship is a good idea.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Despite all the cliches, this movie is actually pretty fun to watch. The characters hit that nice balance of being forgettable enough that you don't mind when they die, but really pretty likeable in their pre-death screentime, especially the android character and her creator, who are kind of lovably sad. And, come on, no movie in which David Cronenberg makes a cameo just to be killed in the first fifteen minutes can be all bad.
Jason X also features a great scene near the end in which the people on the space ship create a holographic Crystal Lake to fool Jason, in which Jason beats one holographic girl in a sleeping bag to death with
another holographic girl in a sleeping bag.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because you can tell that the filmmakers were actually having fun making it. No one had any illusions that they were making a great movie; they knew they were making dreck and reveling in it.
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Freddy vs. Jason, the Bad-Good team up of a series that is often just bad-bad (
Friday the 13th) and a series that has a couple good-good entries (
A Nightmare on Elm Street).
WHY IT'S BAD
It's an old black-and-white movie about giant irradiated ants attacking southwestern American cities.
WHY IT'S GOOD
It's an old black-and-white movie about giant irradiated ants attacking southwestern American cities.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
It's an old black-and-white movie about giant irradiated ants attacking southwestern American cities.
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Plan 9 From Outer Space, a movie that almost certainly falls into the category of bad-bad, but is like some kind of a clinic on what not to do when making a film, and should be required viewing for anyone planning to make movies.
WHY IT'S BAD
Two words: Uwe Boll. This is the first of his continually declining movies based on video games, and it lives up (down?) to the standard. The movie looks like it was shot through a thin sheet of steel wool, and the story is so non-existant that it's barely even worth mentioning. Also, Boll's trend of making once-respectable actors embarrass themselves is upheld here too, in that
Das Boot's Jurgen Prochnow makes a complete ass of himself here.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Because, unlike all of Boll's other movies, the campy awfulness on display is actually pretty entertaining. Watch this trailer to see what I'm talking about. Just try not laughing at the opening narration ("AWFUL zombies!") or the number of times it's mentioned that the Crazy Spanish Pirate Who Was Banished From Spain was banished from Spain or the godawful acting during the leading man's big scene. That's pretty much the whole movie. Well, that plus a 20-minute scene of people shooting zombies. I'm not kidding, it's really that long.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
To get an idea of what Uwe Boll might have been if he had decided to keep making unintentionally funny horror movies instead of misguidedly taking himself at all seriously. I mean, come on. How could you direct a movie with the line "Muerte...that's Spanish for
death!" and not know it's hilarious?
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Alone in the Dark, if only to see Christian Slater and Tara Reid collapsing in on themsevles.
WHY IT'S BAD
The word "Amityville" should be a tip-off. It's a steaming pile of garbage about a house who posesses the oldest brother in a family. It's kind of a more subdued version of one of the best-best horror movies ever,
The Shining. There's also an incest subplot that just makes me kind of sick even thinking about it. Oh, and there's a reticent priest who comes off as a character ripped directly out of perhaps another of the best-best of horror movies,
The Exorcist.
WHY IT'S GOOD
Burt Young is in it! Just looking at that guy is a comfort and a reminder that hey, it could be worse, you could be watching
Rocky V. (But then again, you could be watching
Rocky IV). This movie also has the most ludicrous posession story I've ever seen. The brother gets possessed and then proceeds to shoot his family with a rifle. No, he doesn't send demonic creatures after them or at least axe them. He just shoots them. That's so retarded it's awesome.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because it's incredibly fun to watch this movie with other people to point out all the similarities to other, better movies. My favorite moment from when I was watching it:
MY FRIEND: Look at that priest, he looks just like the priest from
The Exorcist.
HIS GIRLFRIEND: What do you mean?
MY FRIEND: He's dressed just like him.
HIS GIRLFRIEND: You mean...like a priest?
And that's beautiful.
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The first
Amityville Horror, which is almost as bad.
WHY IT'S BAD
The Leprechaun as a character has to be the worst thing to happen to horror movies. At least Freddy Krueger's witticisms were somewhat...witty. The Leprechaun's limericks are just tiring, and he's less threatening than he is annoying. And in this particular movie, the annoying level is taken to immense levels because the titular character is placed in...
oh my!...Compton. The characters are such stereotypical gangstas that they go past parody to just being grating, and, worse, they're boring. Everything about the premise and production value screams "straight to video."
WHY IT'S GOOD
Ice T in a small role. Coolio as himself. A scene near the end where the homies have to dress up in drag Abbott and Costello-style for some reason that has something to do with getting the Leprechaun's gold back for him. I don't know, it didn't make a lot of sense. But it was pretty funny.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because over the closing credits, the Leprechaun raps, almost redeeming his existence. Actually, it would maybe be worthwhile just to skip ahead to that part and pretend it's the whole movie.
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Leprechaun 3, the one set in Las Vegas, if only for the scene with the robot hooker.
WHY IT'S BAD
This movie has a huge cult following surrounding it, and a lot of people would tell you that it's outright good-good, but those people are
wrong. Trust me. It's very bad-good. I guarantee you that all the good stuff you remember from this movie is actually from the sequel (which, contrary to popular belief, is not a remake, but a direct sequel with some re-shot flashbacks). The chainsaw hand, the little Ashes, Klaatu Verata Nikto, the demon that says "I'll swallow your soul!" and the eye creature that floods the cabin with blood are all bits from the second one. This one plays out like a lot of other teens-go-to-the-woods horror movies and doesn't go for the over-the-top humor of
Evil Dead II and
Army of Darkness. Everybody but Bruce Campbell is terrible in it, and its three-dollar budget is evident throughout.
WHY IT'S GOOD
It may play as a straight crappy horror movie, but it's still a Sam Raimi movie, which means it's well-directed and pretty fun. The scenes showing the evil spirits racing through the woods (from their point of view) are really cool, and the tree rape scene (yes, tree rape) is really creepily awesomely awful.
The Evil Dead isn't stylized and funny like the movies that followed it, but it has its merits and some excellent lines here and there, like "Shut up, Linda!"
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because it led to
Evil Dead II and
Army of Darkness, and deserves to be seen just for that.
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Evil Dead II, which I think I've already talked up enough.
WHY IT'S BAD
It's honestly, genuinely one of the worst movies ever made. It's kind of hard to even explain how awful it is. But I'll try to give you a couple of examples. For one thing, there are no trolls in it. Not a single one. There are goblins. And the goblins live in a town called...wait for it...Nilbog. The movie has absolutely no connection to the first Troll. The plot centers on the fact that the family in the movie is switching houses with a farm family, but for no ostensible reason. And there's a weirdly erotic scene involving corn and a druid lady. It's just...it's mind-blowing.
WHY IT'S GOOD
For all the same reasons listed above.
WHY YOU NEED TO SEE IT
Because you want to have your life changed forever.
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A doctor, because something is wrong with you.
Top 20 Most Annoying Horror Movie Clichés
Listmaker:
Sure, clichés are a staple in movies. But of all the movie genres, horror movies are the undisputed cliché champs. Maybe it’s just a simple lack of creativity or just plain laziness to do something new on the part of the writers and directors, but these clichés have just appeared in one too many horror flicks that watching one has become even more excruciating than taking in some of the
most boring movies of all time.
1. Instead of rushing out the door, victims run upstairs and effectively trap themselves inside the house with the killer.
2. The victims could all be track stars, and the killer will somehow still catch up with them without so much as a brisk walk.
3. Strange noises/glow/movements outside the house? Trust the victim to investigate all by herself the source of the commotion in her nighties or underwear.
4. The door is always stuck when a protagonist is fleeing the killer. And then, just when the killer is a foot away and has raised his hatchet/machete to strike, the door opens and the supposed victim narrowly escapes.
5. Women who are being chased almost always fall down, then wait until the killer is almost on top of them before getting up and running again.
6. The hot girl, especially one who has displayed big breasts in an earlier sex scene, always gets killed first
7. “Stay here”, so the hero wannabe tells his girl as he tries to look for and take down the killer by his lonesome. Then it’s either he or the girl he left behind gets chopped to pieces.
8. Since when did the sound of children singing become scary?
9. Cars always break down, no matter how brand new or well-oiled it is. And similar to no. 4, the engine comes to life at the last second and the protagonists make their escape.
10. No grown-up ever believes the frightened kids, until it’s too late.
11. Ominous sound and music, character gets really spooked and a cat suddenly jumps into the frame.
12. Usually, a female character is alone in a certain place, scared shitless knowing there’s a killer on the loose, then somebody, who turns out to be a friend or a boyfriend, just grabs her shoulder from out of nowhere and almost gives her a heart attack.
13. One minute only the victim is reflected in a mirror, usually one on a medicine cabinet, and the killer’s reflection is suddenly there when the victim closes the cabinet.
14. The victims almost always split up purportedly to “cover more ground”, and end up being taken out by the killer one by one. It’s safe to assume they’ve never heard of the saying “there’s strength in numbers”.
15. Real people run like hell when some killer is chasing after them. Characters in horror movies tend to keep looking behind them while running at full speed and end up stumbling and falling, then eventually getting murdered in the process.
16. The killer lies prone after being shot by the protagonists, who then check out the killer's body, only to have the killer come back to life and jump on them. What's wrong with a few well-placed rounds in the head before approaching the body?
17. Scary messages scrawled in red on a mirror.
18. Minorities almost always never survive the movie
19. The corpse, or part of a corpse of a friend or a colleague always falls on the other surviving characters and scares them out of their wits.
20. The killer always lives again, or at least shows some sign of life, at the end of the movie in preparation for yet another sequel.
10 Eerie Haunted Places
Many of you will remember our
original list of haunted places in which we visited some of the most famous haunted sites in the world. This list contains fewer famous, but equally spooky places. Not restricted to houses, we also look at graveyards and towns.
10 Babenhausen Barracks
At the German Babenhausen Barracks (now a museum) the ghosts of German soldiers, some in World War II era uniforms, have been reported. Lights are said to turn off and on by themselves and voices are heard in the basement. Footsteps and commands are allegedly heard at night, supposedly without physical cause. Legend has it that if a soldier happens to visit the museum and pick up a telephone, a woman will at times be heard “talking backwards”, unintelligible, in neither German nor English. The town was the site of a witch burned at the stake in the 19th century, and her ghost is said to have seduced, and then killed, several German soldiers since then. Pictured above are two American Soldiers at the Barracks in 1974. [
Wikipedia]
9 The Screaming Bridge
Maud Hughes Road is located in Liberty Township, Ohio. It has been the site of many terrible accidents and suicides. Railroad tracks lay 25 feet below the bridge, and at least 36 people have been reported dead on or around the Maud Hughes Road Bridge. Ghostly figures, mists, and lights have been seen, as well as black hooded figures and a phantom train. The legend says that a car carrying a man and a woman stalled on top ofthe bridge. The man got out to get help while the girl stayed. When the man returned, the girl was hanging on the bridge above the tracks. The man then perished with unexplained causes. To this day, many people have reported hearing the ghosts’ conversations, then a woman’s scream followed by a man’s scream. Another story says that a woman once threw her baby offthe bridge and then hanged herself afterwards. [
Wikipedia]
8 112 Ocean Avenue
This house will be no stranger to people who love horror movies. It is the house on which the film The Amityville Horror is based. The house is a six-bedroom Dutch Colonial style house built in 1924. The best known feature of the house was, at one time, its pair of quarter circle shaped windows on the third floor attic level, which gave it an eerie, eye-like appearance. These windows have since been removed and the house renumbered to keep tourists away. On November 13, 1974, 23-year old Ronald DeFeo, Jr. fatally shot six members of his family at the house. During his murder trial in 1975, he claimed that voices in his head had urged him to carry out the killings. He was found guilty and is still in jail in New York. In December 1975, George Lutz and his wife, Kathy, purchased the house and moved in with their three children. After 28 days they left the house, claiming to have been tormented by paranormal phenomena while living there. The family experienced foul smells, faces at the windows, screams, moving objects, and all manner of bizarre phenomena. The image above is the house as it appears today. [
Wikipedia]
7 Pickens County Courthouse
The Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton, Alabama is a courthouse in west Alabama famous for a ghostly image that can be seen in one of its windows. The image is said to be the face of Henry Wells, who, as legend has it, was falsely accused of burning down the town’s previous courthouse, and lynched on a stormy night in 1878. The image on the window is easily seen, although it is more face-like from some angles than from others. It is said that the image is only visible from outside the courthouse; from inside the pane appears to be a normal pane of glass. Since the photo above was taken, the city of Carrollton has installed, on the exterior of the courthouse, a reflective highway sign with an arrow pointing to the pane where the image appears. There are permanent binoculars installed across the street from the window for people who wish to get a closer look. [
Wikipedia]
6 Balete Drive
Balete Drive is a street located in New Manila, Quezon City, Philippines. It is known for apparitions of a white lady and haunted houses which were built during the Spanish Era (1800s). New Manila has an abundance of balete trees, which, according to legend, is a favorite spot of wandering spirits and other paranormal beings. Paranormal experts believe that the white lady was raped by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Witnesses of the white lady, advise motorists to avoid the street at night, especially if they are alone. If it is necessary to travel the route, they advise that the backseat of the car is fully occupied and that no one should look back or look in any mirrors. The apparition wears a night gown, has long hair but has no face or one covered with blood. [
Wikipedia]
5 Rosenheim, Bavaria
More well known as the Rosenheim Poltergeist, this infestation of bizarre activity is one of the most well known in Germany. In 1967, strange phenomena began occurring in the office of lawyer Sigmund Adam. Telephones would ring with no one at the other end, photocopiers spilt their ink, and desk drawers would open without being touched. A German paper installed equipment to monitor the phones and in 3 month they recorded over 600 calls to the speaking clock – despite the fact that all of the telephones were unplugged. In one 15 minute period, 46 calls were recorded – a rate that seemed impossible given the mechanical dialing system in place. In October 1967, all light bulbs in the building went out with a huge bang. After installing cameras and voice recorders, investigators were able to discover that the events only took place when 19-year-old Annemarie Schneider (a recently employed secretary) was present. It was claimed that a suspended light would swing violently when Ms Schneider walked beneath it, and the lights would flicker whenever she walked in to the office. When Schneider went on holiday the events stopped. Upon her return, the poltergeist activity returned. Schneider was fired and the problems stopped for good. Pictured above is Schneider beneath the lights that were seen to swing.
4 Bélmez de la Moraleda
One house in one street in Bélmez de la Moraleda, Spain has recently become very famous thanks to eerie faces that have been appearing in the floor. Street Real 5 has become a popular attraction for ghost tourists as the faces appear frequently and can be easily photographed. The appearances in Bélmez began on August 23, 1971 when María Gómez Cámara saw a face appear on her cement kitchen floor. Her husband took a pickaxe and destroyed the face. Soon after another one appeared. An excavation, conducted under the location of the house, revealed human remains, which were removed. The picture above is one of the faces.
3 Union Cemetery
Union Cemetery in Easton, Connecticut is not just the most haunted cemetery in Connecticut, it is considered by many to be the most haunted cemetery in the United States. The most famous ghost there is the White Lady. Numerous photographs have been taken of her and she has even been caught on film. She has long dark hair and wears a bonnet and nightgown. She frequently appears in the roadway along route 59 and sometimes route 111 where she is often “hit” by oncoming vehicles. On one occasion in 1993, a fireman was driving along the road when he hit the lady – he heard a thud and a dent was left in his vehicle. As the woman appeared in front of his car he also saw a farmer with a straw hat sitting beside him in the car. The cemetery is locked at night and regularly patrolled by the police. The image above is one of many that can be found on the Internet.
2 Pluckley
Pluckley is a small village in Kent, England that is believed to be the most haunted village in England. In addition to the 12 (some say 13 or 14) ghosts in Pluckley, the village is also famous for the television program
The Darling Buds of May which was filmed there. Of the ghosts you can see here, the most spectacular are the ghostly highwayman and coach and horses seen near the town hall, the ghost of a gypsy woman burned to death in her sleep, two hanging bodies, a phantom monk, three upper class ladies and, perhaps spookiest of all, the Screaming Woods. The Screaming Woods is an area just outside the town haunted by the ghosts of many people who were lost there. Their screams can be heard coming from inside the forest at night.
1 50 Berkeley Square
This residential area of London best known for the song
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, is also home to the most haunted house in London! Number 50 Berkeley Square is home to a large number of ghosts, the earliest of which is that of a young girl murdered in the 1700s by a sadistic servant. She is frequently seen on the top floor sobbing and wringing her hands in despair. Another woman trying to escape her uncle fell from a window – her ghost is often seen hanging from a windowsill. While the house was vacant in the 1870s, the neighbors heard numerous screams and moans coming from the house. They also heard furniture moving, bells ringing, and windows being slammed shut. Years later the house was occupied by a Mr. Dupre, who locked his insane brother in a room on the top floor. He fed the insane man through a special opening in the door. This is the room that is supposed to be central to the haunting. The house is currently home to a bookstore – strange occurrences have been noted by all of the staff of the shop. The top floor is kept locked at all times and no one is allowed to enter it.
The 7 Most Easily Escapable Movie Monsters
When victim and movie monster square off, it's not exactly a chess match. Here's seven monsters that anyone with working legs and the IQ of a well-trained Dalmatian could escape.
Samara Morgan from The Ring
How will she kill you? In the least-straightforward manner possible. There's a whole runaround involving copying tapes and getting phone calls, but in the end she crawls out of your TV. What then? We don't really know, actually, but you end up a corpse with your color scheme inverted.
How can you win?
Well, for the observant victim, Samara's main weakness is that you know when she's going to come get you. That is, in seven days, right down to the ****ing minute. One would think the obvious thing to do would be to step outside and leave the TV behind. Go camping maybe.
Since nobody seems to have tried this, we don't know if she'll wait, biting her non-nails in your cathode ray tube until the new season of
Battlestar Galactica starts and you have to come back.
Also, maybe try to mess with her. Can she come out of a laptop? A video iPod? Go to a TV store and you'll probably get a Scooby Doo-esque chase scene with the two of you running in and out of screens. If all else fails, run out the clock in a sports stadium with Jumbo Vision and take a lot of innocent people with you.
The Predator from Predator
How will it kill you? Most likely, seeing as you're fleshy and human, by poking you with a sharp stick. Failing that, it can shoot blue spheres of pure energy that look like they could be recreated in MS Paint, but will nonetheless **** your **** up.
How can you win?
The Predator's weakness is honor. Even Schwarzenegger realized this, since he noticed it butchered everyone in the film except for the helpless woman they had taken hostage. Using this knowledge to your advantage, smear yourself with feces and crawl weeping toward it. Wrap yourself around its shin and rock back and forth, making as much mess and noise as possible. The
Predator will ignore you out of sheer contempt.
Also, it seems to have a bomb built inside it somewhere, activated by pushing buttons on its wrist.
If you can wait until it's asleep and turn that thing on, all you have to do is run.
Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
How will he kill you? Meat-tenderizing hammer! And, yes, sometimes a chainsaw.
How can you win?
Leatherface is stupid. Really, inbred-to-the-point-of-extinction stupid. Your recourse is to be smart. Not even that smart, just stop running and screaming for two ****ing minutes. If you get out of his line of sight and keep your trap shut, he'll forget you exist and wander home to play with LEGOs.
Also, don't talk to anyone within 150 miles of a Leatherface encounter. Every single one of them is related to him and wants to eat your succulent young flesh. Just keep driving until you’re not in Texas any more.
The demon Pazuzu from The Exorcist
How will he kill you? He may be the laziest of the monsters on the list. He'll probably do his evil deeds through the body of some other victim (such as a little girl) and might simply try to talk you into killing yourself. Pazuzu is evil, just not very proactive.
How can you win?
Don't listen to him. You've likely been given the advice that he'll mix lies and truth to **** with you, the trick is to pay no attention to either. There's always the chance that your mother does suck cocks in hell, but there's not really a lot you can do about it, is there? Have a cup of tea and nod thoughtfully at each of his points, and then counter with a quote from a popular cartoon or anime series.
The demon will probably be frustrated enough to leave at this point, and if not, hey, just go somewhere else and get drunk.
We should add a disclaimer that the possessed girl will most likely die, but this article is about how
you can survive.
Michael Myers from Halloween
How will he kill you? With a big ol' knife, mostly, though once he drove his thumb directly into some guy's brain.
How can you win? If you're being stalked by this Shatner-masked Rhodes Scholar, chances are you're young and attractive. This being the case, you're likely able to move faster than the standard Myers saunter-–the pace of a retarded glacier.
With this knowledge, maintain a brisk walking pace in an open area such as a field. With no objects to suddenly appear from behind, Myers will soon be just a tall man alone in a field, stabbing at some cows.
If he does make it into your house or similar enclosed area, call the police, but try not to make any reference to an indestructible ghost-giant killing machine. This will inevitably lead to a single skeptical officer arriving at your door, finding no evidence whatsoever, and then being killed in your presence later on, having learned a valuable lesson about trust.
NOTE: This section can also be applied to Jason Voorhees from
Friday the 13th.
The Thing from, you guessed it, The Thing
How will he kill you? By mimicking a person and either fostering a culture of paranoia amongst an isolated group to the point that they turn on each other, or by suddenly growing a new mouth somewhere in its crotch region and biting your face off.
How can you win? If you suspect one of your co-workers or loved ones is The Thing, arm yourself and follow them around for as long as it takes. Given enough time, it will either attack you, attack someone else, or turn around and yell, "YES! OK! I'M THE THING! CONGRATULATIONS! NOW, WILL YOU PLEASE LEAVE ME THE **** ALONE SO I CAN TAKE A ****?" At this point, set it on fire and run away.
This tactic can equally be applied to the Body Snatchers, creditors and minor inconveniences. Also, if you suspect one of your enemies is The Thing, smile! He or she died a painful death before getting taken over.
The Blair Witch from The Blair Witch Project
How she kill you? Evidently, by making you stand in the corner, then pushing you over. This is particularly effective if you happen to be a 5-year-old with brittle bone disease.
How can you win? You get a lot of warning. Find little stick figures in odd places? Someone making a lot of noise at night, moving your stuff around, generally being a pain in the ass? If this is happening in your home, you probably just have children, and a straightforward beating will suffice. If it occurs in the woods, it’s the Blair Witch saying "please leave the woods or you’ll force me to be mildly irritating for a while longer."
The Blair Witch is, however, old, dead and picks on children. If you are reading this distinctly adult-oriented site, you should be old enough to just punch her in the face and stroll away, possibly walking on her lawn in the process.
10 Awesome Robot Halloween Pumpkins
Halloween is upon us. That means that it’s time for Pumpkin carving. Many of you carve robots into your Pumpkins, rightly so. There’s nothing scarier than robots. Below are 10 awesome robot Pumpkins that we like. Scary as they look, they will all rot on the porch, so no worries.
This guy is fittingly named Nebort as he looks like a nerd bot.
A
Dalek pumpkin. I doubt we will be seeing this guy on a Doctor Who Halloween special.
The almighty
Autobot Halloween Pumpkin.
Punk-O-Tron. Pumpkin, duct tape and pipe.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6n8mrL8TOY[/ame]
DIY Cylon Pumpkin.
R2-D2 Pumpkin.
C-3P0 Pumpkin.
A
Cyberman from Doctor Who.
Wall-E.
Terminator Pumpkin. He’ll be back. Next year.
15 Bogeymen From Around The World
The bogeyman is a legendary ghost-like monster. The bogeyman has no specific appearance and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. This list looks at 15 bogeymen from around the world.
15 Japan
The Namahage visits each
house on New Year’s to ask if any misbehaving children live there. If the parents are able to report that their children are not lazy and do not cry, he moves on to the next house.
14 Korea
The Korean bogeyman is called Kotgahm, which is the word for persimmon. The legend is that a mother told her crying child that she would feed him to a tiger if he did not behave. A passing tiger, hearing the threat, waited outside the door for his meal. Instead, the mother gave the child a persimmon, a kotgahm, and the crying stopped. The tiger thought the kotgahm must be a terrifically fierce creature to be more frightening than a tiger. Today, the kotgahm is most often visualized as an old man with a mesh sack who carries naughtychildren away.
13 Spain and Mexico
Duérmete, niño, duérmete ya.
Que viene el coco y te comerá
Go to sleep child, go to sleep now.
The coconut man will come and eat you.
If you think of a coconut as a head, with the three holes the features of a face, you can see how El Coco might be transformed in the mind of a child to a hairy little man. During the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain, there were orphan collectors, who tookchildren away in sacks. The misbehavior? Refusing to go to
bed and sleep.
12 Finland
One of the most unusual of the world’s bogeys is Groke, a giant blue blob who is so lonely and sad that the ground beneath her feet freezes as she walks. She is not malevolent, just lonely. But she frightens people, and they run from her.
11 England
There are many theories about the origin of the word “bogeyman.” One is that it devolved from “buggy man,” the driver of the cart picking up corpses during the Black Plague that decimated Europe. As in the United States, the bogeyman may be nothing more clearly defined than a mist or fog, scratching at windows, or he is sometimes thought of as a tall, gaunt, scarecrow-like man.
10 Scotland
The boggart is a malicious fairy who causes personal calamities, small and large. It sometimes puts a cold hand on people’s faces at night. You must not name it, or it will become unreasonable and follow your
family wherever you go. A horseshoe over the doorway will protect you from boggarts.
9 Bahamas
The Small Man has a rolling cart and captures children who are out after sundown. If he gets you, you will become a Small Person yourself, and ride in his cart forever.
8 Bulgaria
The anti-Santa Claus, Baba Yaga’s evil partner, Torbalan lurks in the shadows in Bulgaria, waiting to snatch misbehaving children and carry them away in a sack
7 Czech Republic and Poland
Bubak is a scarecrow-like man who hides on riverbanks, making sounds like a lost baby to lure adults as well as children. He drives a cart driven by cats and weaves
clothing for the souls he has stolen.
6 Netherlands
The Bolman has claws and fangs. He hides under your bed or in your closet waiting to grab you and put you in the basement if you don’t sleep.
5 Philippines
Pugot Mamu is a gigantic, headless shape-shifter who lives in trees and deserted
houses. Self-beheaded, he eats children through the hole in his neck.
4 Quebec
The Bonhomme Sept-Heures – the seven o’clock man – may have been taken from the English “bone setter,” an old name for a
traveling medicine man. The seven o’clock man steals children, but can only get you if you are awake.
3 Norway
The Nokken, a lake monster, will get you if you don’t come in when called.
2 Trinidad and Tobago
The Jumbies live here, post-death misbehavers. They are shape-shifters, so children are taught not to play with random animals. There are several ways to defeat Jumbies, however. You can leave your shoes outside; Jumbies have no feet and will spend the night trying to get the shoes on. You can leave a container of sand or rice outside the door; Jumbies will have to count each grain. You can cross a river; Jumbies won’t cross water. You can leave a rope with many knots; Jumbies will have to untie each one.
1 Italy
Italy has l’uomo Nero, a tall man with an unseen face, a heavy coat and a black hat. He hides under the table and parents knock on the table to warn their children that l’uomo Nero is present and will take them away if they don’t eat their dinner.
The 5 Most Half-Assed Monsters in Movie History
You wouldn't think it would be that hard to come up with a movie monster. You just take what people are already afraid of, and make it either bigger, stronger or uglier. People are scared of crime, so you make a movie about a super-strong killer with a messed-up face behind a hockey mask. Boom. Collect your money. But some writers seem to struggle with this concept.
Badly. So, you wind up with movies like...
#5.
The Gingerdead Man
The Monster:
Pastry.
Why it Could Have Been Scary
Six words: Gary Busey
is the Gingerdead Man. Picture it: Busey dressed up in a gingerbread man costume, hacking, slashing and making pastry-based puns along the way. You can't imagine the amount of money we would have paid to see that. Actually, you probably could have imagined it (it's four dollars).
"I don't know where I am right now!"
Why it Wasn't
Well Gary Busey is the Gingerdead Man, kind of. Gary only appears in the movie's first five minutes as the world's worst robber: He enters a diner, riffles through the cash register but takes no money, shoots people instead, gets caught and, in the end, is sent to the electric chair. So what we get from then on is a very, very shitty puppet voiced by Gary Busey.
And to transform Gary Busey into said puppet, we have to take one hell of a
deus ex machina roller coaster: Busey's corpse is cremated and then his evil mom mixes the ashes into a gingerbread mix which she delivers to a local bakery. There, a worker accidentally cuts himself and bleeds a gallon of blood over the mixture that he bakes anyway, and then the oven is hit with a power surge causing the mixture to turn into the Gingerdead Man.
Not all that realistic, according to the experts we talked to.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
Allow us to take you to the film's climatic showdown (WARNING: SPOILERS!). We see Gingerdead Man's absolute failure as a movie monster demonstrated:
In order for him to be scary, they had to arm him with a revolver.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K95j-bnbdOE[/ame]
Though we do have to agree this was probably the only ending possible ("Why don't we just have one of the good guys eat him?"). Still, when you use "Got Milk" as a pithy bon mot in your screenplay, you officially must turn in your Writer's Guild Card. It's true, look it up.
#4.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
The Monster:
Yes, a bed that eats people.
Successful horror often makes us afraid of everyday, mundane things.
Jaws brought terror to swimming in the ocean.
The Blair Witch Project spooked us out of any future camping trips.
The Ring exploited our natural fear of wet children. So the people behind
Death Bed must have thought, "What's something people do every day? Sleep!
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. It's like Hannibal Lecter meets IKEA. Bang, done. Someone pass the cocaine."
Why it Wasn't
To capture its prey, the bed possesses all the wily powers of, well, a bed: cuddliness, soft pillows and 1,000 thread count sheets. Luckily for the ravenous bed, a bevy of horny, and somewhat unattractive, youngsters come upon its spooky old mansion and say, "See that run-down, abandoned mansion stinking with the smells of death and demonic digestive juices? We should totally **** in there!"
And there is nothing that gives the murderous bed the munchies like a couple of hormonal kids doing it right on top of him. Can you blame him? His food of choice is fornicating right on his face. Imagine a Whopper giving a blow job to a corn dog on your face, and see if you don't get a little peckish.
You'd think all these randy teens would stop going to the house, where all their horny friends don't return from, and check into a motel instead. But let's face it; getting eaten by a bed is still more appealing than lying down on a urine-soaked Motel 6 mattress.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zrolg5uHag[/ame]
Knives cannot defeat it! After the guy strikes the bed, we're treated to the slowest, dullest sequence in horror film history. There is some very subtle acting going on here, and by "subtle" we mean "almost comatose." At the sight of his dissolved hands, the "actor" summons up all the emotional devastation of a guy who just realized the pizza delivery man forgot the crazy bread.
"Oh no, not my favorite hands!" If that wasn't enough
Death Bed for you, feel free to enjoy [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBhsPP06-mA&feature=related"]this clip[/ame], in which two guys and one awesome mustache get attacked by a deck of playing cards, and then shoot themselves in the crotch repeatedly with a pistol. In a movie called
Death Bed, it probably makes total sense in context.
#3.
The Mangler
The Monster:
A laundry folding machine.
Why It Could Have Been Scary
The Mangler is based on a Stephen King short story, and everybody loves Stephen King. Maybe too much; there was a long stretch in King's career where he'd just **** into a fax machine and send it to his publisher with a note reading, "Print this!"
And they did. And then Hollywood filmed the **** Stephen shat.
"Hey, stay on the line, I'm about to pinch off another bestseller."
That was the case with
The Mangler, a tale that appeared in one of King's collections of short stories. As in, this was one of those ideas even he didn't think could be stretched into a whole novel. Kind of makes you wonder why...
Why it Isn't Scary
In the film, you have to actually feed yourself to the demonically possessed laundry folding machine. It doesn't sneak into your house, it doesn't tail you in a car and it doesn't creep up on you while you're having sex with your girlfriend in the woods. Quite simply, you must give the Mangler permission to kill you by inserting yourself into the machine.
That's not a monster, that's a pretty standard laundry folding machine. There are far more scary industrial machines that exist in the real world, like metal presses and lumber claws. You know 118 lumberjacks per 100,000 die every year, and lumberjacking equipment isn't even demonically possessed. By our count, the Mangler only takes out a few rather pointless lives. Hey Mangler, call us when you grow a pair of nuts.
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
Watch as a middle-aged woman sticks her hand into the Mangler's mouth, over and over, taunting it.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0jPWSnni9A[/ame]
The way we figure, the lady was asking for it. Good news: She's totally eligible for workers comp. Bad news: She's the size and shape of a t-shirt. As for the insane old man on the catwalk? The one with robot legs? We think he just wandered in from a different movie.
#2.
The Lift
The Monster:
Killer elevator.
Why it Could Have Been Scary
Computers, robots, nanobots--technology has often played the boogeyman in horror films. Mankind has a love/fear relationship with technology. Sure you enjoy texting with your iPhone, but you keep a suspicious eye on it, wondering when the day will come that you walk in on it having sex with your wife.
The producers of
The Lift must have assumed that fear of technology extended to elevators. What? It's not 1885? So elevators aren't considered high-tech anymore? "Okay," the producers said, "let's install super smart A.I. in the elevator." Now we're talking scary.
Why it Didn't Work
"Take the stairs... take the stairs... for God's sake, take the stairs... " That's the actual tagline from [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXX68Y7j75U"]the awesome trailer[/ame] for this movie. It's amazing when your tagline manages to kill the entire concept of the film in one shot. Why
don't we just take the stairs? After, say, the second person dies at the hands of the elevator, just stick an "Out of Order" sign on the ****er and call it a day.
This doesn't occur to the people in the film, however, as right in the trailer we hear one protagonist ask, "Why not go to the police?" only to be answered, "There's no evidence."
Oh, so
that's the reason they won't just arrest its ass. Well, try to beat a confession out of it then!
Worst Attempt at Horror
The following clip presumably takes place right after this exchange:
"Hey, the elevator's acting strange."
"Sure, let me just stick my goddamned head in there."
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1233785477
As with the
Mangler, you have the evil elevator killing a man in the exact way that a regular elevator could. They even show it [ame="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bf1Kl0Ey8No"]killing a blind man[/ame]... and by "killing" we mean it sits there innocently while the blind man stumbles straight into the empty shaft.
Wouldn't a blind guy poke around with his cane a little and make sure there's a freaking floor there before he goes striding in? When the cops finally throw the lift in jail, we're thinking its lawyer can easily get it off the hook for that one. That was his own fault.
#1.
Night of the Lepus
The Monster:
Giant bunnies.
Why it Could Have Been Scary
The movie is based on a book called
The Year of the Angry Rabbit (we **** you not) written by an Australian guy named Russell Reading Braddon. Amazingly, Braddon wrote 31 more books; including
The Naked Island, a chronicle of his four years as a Japanese prisoner of war during WWII that sold more than a million copies.
All we can say is what those Nazis did in their prison camps can't compare to what the Japanese were doing if they managed to warp a celebrated writer into a man who wrote a book called
The Year of the Angry Rabbit. Hell, they could have made a scary movie about
that instead.
Why It's Not Scary
Let's just state the obvious: A giant rabbit doesn't sound like a monster, it sounds like next year's must have Christmas gift. ****
that animatronic triceratops toy. We want an enormous Mr. Fluffers! We want to ride him around!
The studio must have had a hunch their monster was pretty lame, because they didn't even feature it in [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIsI7CwjH3M"]the trailer[/ame]. "Wow that movie looks scary. I gotta find out what the monster is." That's what filmgoers back in the 70s said when they were exposed to this trailer. We're picturing a guy running out of the matinee, waving his arms at the people standing in line. "IT'S RABBITS! DON'T GO IN THERE! THE MONSTERS ARE BIG FLUFFY RABBITS! SAVE YOUR GODDAMNED MONEY!"
Most Pathetic Attempt at Horror
The first 40 seconds of this attempt at terror is cuter than that hamster on a piano video. Look at the herd of huge, adorable bunnies with their big twitching noses!
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Od92391upY[/ame]
Then, it turns right into the rabbit attack scene from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, complete with the ridiculous splatter of blood around the neck as the rabbit claws out her throat for no ****ing reason.
Holy ****, you thought we wanted to own one of these
before? Science, get to work on making these things. We've got a town we want to terrorize, from the back of our huge, killer bunny.
[Just to pre-empt those of you who are about to ask why we didn't call out The Day of the Triffids and its ridiculous huge, lumbering killer flowers, we already did that in this article. We didn't want to seem like we were piling on.]
Finally:
What halloween related list would be complete without The one, The only;
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtyJbIOZjS8[/ame]
Prepare yourself to either walk the streets and knock on many doors, or answer the door to hand out treats to children. With this spooky time upon us I decided to overload you with information on the season. So get comfortable and brace yourself, because there is a lot of reading in the List: Halloween special.
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